Starspot Animations

Today I gave a short talk at Cool Stars 18, detailing some of my recent research on determining starspot evolution from stars in Kepler. A few people asked to see my animations from the talk, so I thought I would include a few of them here:

Here is the "logo" I made for the talk, which outlines the geometry of the systems we're studying. This shows dark spots rotating in/out of view as the star rotates, and a transiting exoplanet that zips past more frequently than the rotation period. This does not represent an actual star/planet system, but is simply instructive:

Next is the example of how a starspot on a rotating stellar surface (left) affects the light curve over time (right). We have also included some inclination on the star:

Click image for animated gif (1.8mb)

Finally, a movie that demonstrates the finer detail features that we see during exoplanet transits, allowing us to break interesting degeneracies in determining the spot properties: